the German envoys and agents failed to
accomplish in physical damage, they
more than compensated for by inflaming
the public's imagination.

To the masterminds in Berlin -- primarily Col. Walther Nicolai, director of
the Nachrichten Abteilung, the intelligence headquarters, centered in Berlin --
inflaming public imagination in the
United States still wasn't enough. Dr.
Albert, in a ridiculous charade of bungling, had allowed a U.S. Secret Servicc
agent to snatch (in a New York elevated
train) a briefcase containing incriminating literature about the Germans' activities.
It involved not only Albert, Boy-Ed
and von Papem but Dr. Constantin
Theodor Dumba, the Austro-Hungarian
Ambassador and an American, George
Sylvester Viereck, poet, propagandist
and publisher of the militantly pro-German newspaper Vaterland.

The documents chronicled sabotage
and projected activities, including an ambitious program to place fire bombs on
Allied ships; wreck the Welland Canal,
which bypassess Niagara Falls; and Wreak general chaos along the Canadian border.

That did it Albert, Boy-Ed, von Papen and Dumba were sent packing. Von Bernstorff
miraculously weathered the storm. But Colonel Nicoiai knew that it was now time to rush in a
reserve professional sabotage tean. It consisted of one man -- the suave, aristocratic army
reservist, Capt Franz von Rintelen.

Buying was an empty boast. Already, the Allies' investment in U.S.-made materiel of war was
approaching an annual $3 billion. Blowing up munitions was more within the realm of practicability.

Von Rintelen perfected the "pencil" bomb, a devilishly simple incendiary device which ignited
cargoes when ships were far at sea. It was estimated later that he alone had
destroyed $10 million worth of cargo on 36 ships.

In the United States less than three months, von Rintelen had worked fast. A spurious telegram,
concocted by Scotland Yard, lured him on his way back to Germany. He was removed from a neutral
ship at Falmouth, arrested and eventually returned to the United States for trial and imprisonment
in the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta.

Before this supreme trickster had himself been tricked however, he was to recall strollling
along the New Jersey waterfront one day and noting the intense activity at a mile-long pier
jutting out from the settlement of Communipaw, opposite the Statue of Liberty. This was Black Tom
Pier, resting partly on diminutive Black Tom Island, and containing a complex of warehouses and
the tracks of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The name "Black Tom" was said to have originated from a
swarthy-skinned fisherman, once the island's sole inhabitant.